Monday, June 11, 2007

This place is a dump

Note: Contains fecal issues that some non-parents may find unsettling. Read at your own risk.

We are on our last push to get Eldest potty-trained. He's come a long way, going pee in the toilet without us even prompting him and not going in his underpants that we let him wear sometimes, when we know there isn't a big poop coming (and even in his Pull-Up diaper, he'll use the toilet too). We're proud of him and what he's accomplished -- he's even starting to pee when he wakes up in the morning. Today, however, the poop hit the fan.

He's been reluctant to sit on the potty and go poop. We ask him if he has to go, and he says he doesn't. We ask him if he wants to try, and he says very loudly "No, I don't have to go poop!" Even the sticker bribery doesn't work on this end (no pun intended) -- he has a sticker board that we've told him if he fills up, we'll by him a big toy (the thinking being, if he fills it up, he's potty-trained completely and deserves the reward, plus, what we'll save on diapers for a month will pay for the toy). He poops in the potty, 5 stickers. He's still reluctant.

Today I was very proud, he made it through his pre-preschool with big boy underpants, two hours, no accidents. We got home, I asked him if he had to go potty, got the same angry reaction, that he didn't have to go. I told him we'd have to put a diaper on him then. This wasn't just as a reminder to try to be a big boy, but also because I knew it was the time of day when another big poop was coming. So I go into the kitchen, try to finish my lunch and make it to the next commercial during a "Law and Order" rerun. Eldest walks in and says he pooped in his pants.

I know I'm not supposed to get angry during this process, there are going to be accidents. And it was mildly my fault that I didn't change him as soon as I said I would. Yet I was still annoyed that a smart 3-year-old either didn't realize he had to poop five minutes before he did, or that he just didn't want to even if he knew it was coming. The mess was enormous, I actually took the underpants outside and tried washing them off with a hose before I applied stain stick.

It gets better -- we had a repeat performance about 6 hours later. Eldest normally doesn't poop thrice in a day, I guess it was crappy karma (Littlest had an escaping poop this morning that was messy, too). At least Eldest is realizing the moment after it happens and telling us, rather than sitting in his own poop for minutes (which he'll do in his diaper). I want to recite the Alcoholics Anonymous serenity prayer every time this happens, knowing he'll eventually he'll figure it out (he better, they won't let him into real preschool in August with diapers). We read both his potty books tonight and agreed to give it a try tomorrow. I'm hoping he earns the five stickers.